With a distinguished acting career and four acclaimed short films to her credit, making the next step to writing and directing her first feature film seemed like a welcome and natural challenge for Shelley Thompson.
But there’s nothing natural about making a movie in the middle of a pandemic, and Thompson had been waiting to tell the story in Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor for over two years.
One of the featured players on Trailer Park Boys, and director of the award-winning short Duck Duck Goose (which played festivals worldwide in 2019), Thompson was on stage in Neptune Theatre’s hit comedy Calendar Girls last March when the arrival of COVID-19 brought everything to a halt.
Adapting to an ever-changing situation
Her summer plan was to film her story about a young trans woman who returns to her small home town following the death of her mother. The script was one of 12 selected from over 1,000 to be workshopped at the New York Writers Lab 2018 supported by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, and it was to be filmed in Halifax, Windsor, on the South Shore and in Antigonish.
Using the province’s visual production value and talented film industry workers, the goal was to make a film that would have cost $5 million anywhere else for a fraction of that budget, but as summer approached, it was hard to predict where things were headed.
Thankfully, what happened next was the Atlantic bubble, and a set of workable health and safety protocols laid out by Screen Nova Scotia that ensured production could resume again. With shooting recently finished, and the painstaking editing process well underway, Thompson credits her “tenacious” producer Terry Greenlaw at Picture Plant and skilled production manager Shauna Hatt with helping Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor to hit the ground running and stay on schedule.
“They’re why it happened, basically,” says Thompson from her home in Wolfville. “It feels surreal, really, because it was an 18-day shoot, and it all happened so fast. It felt like every day we were dealing with a new peculiar ... crisis is too strong a word, for some days, but other days it wasn’t.
“We were dealing with something new nearly every day, and thinking about the pandemic for sure.”
Working with new rules
Thankfully, the health and safety guidelines for filming were clear and not impossible for a smaller independent film crew to adapt to, much like the upcoming Bretten Hannam feature Wildhood, which began production in Nova Scotia in August. Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor had a supervisor on set who regularly checked cast and crew, anyone who wasn’t appearing on camera wore a mask, and maintaining physical distance remained a priority.
“The whole shoot was pretty amazing. I mean, I only have my short film experiences to go by, but we had such an incredibly positive and happy set,” says Thompson.
“It was a really diverse set, and I don’t know if that made a difference. But there were a lot of youngsters, but there were also a lot of overqualified people for the jobs they were doing, and some who were really learning, and it was all remarkably joyful, it really was a beautiful, positive experience.”
Thompson also credits director of photography Kevin Fraser — this week’s FIN Stream Audience Choice Award winner for Bone Cage — with setting the tone on set through patience and professionalism, and the film’s star, Toronto-based trans actor Maya Henry, who had to quarantine for two weeks before appearing on camera.
Perfect cast
The director calls the extra expense “non-negotiable” because for her, Henry was the only person she could think of as Dawn, who has to reconnect with her father John (Trailer Park Boys’ Robb Wells), and stand up to the transphobia she faces from her former friends and neighbours.
Henry’s credits include acting in the short For Nonna Anna and directing the short Transient Happiness, but she also has a large online following, with YouTube videos charting her journey and offering her views on everything from personal stories and health to fashion and lifestyle for trans and cis-gendered fans.
“What those YouTube videos don’t show you is just what a committed, professional, emotionally accessible individual she is,” says Thompson. “She was just a delight to work with every day. I really can’t say enough good about her.
“She amazed us, and grew every day as a performing. She went from strength to strength to strength, so that choice — which in a way wasn’t really a choice — to bring her and invest in her in that way was well worth it.”
Thompson’s connection to the story about how families can change, and how their members need to be prepared to adapt to those changes, is a personal one that kept her determined to see Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor make it through the many levels of development and funding.
Her son is popular Nova Scotia trans musician T. Thomason, who this weekend released a new single Bliss Pt. II featuring Sarah McLachlan, and was seen nationwide on CTV’s The Launch last year. Thompson says viewers may look for parallels between Dawn’s family and her own when the film debuts on the Crave streaming platform in 2021, but apart from being informed by her own feelings and experiences, the film tells a different story.
“I wasn’t interested in talking about transition, because I didn’t feel capable, but I did understand family, and family responses to this journey,” she says. I’ve seen it from all angles, from my siblings responses to my stepmom’s response, to trans responses and my own and my husband’s response in trying to be the best parents that we could be.
“But also dealing with something we never expected to deal with, and finding out what it felt like to give up a name that we’d always loved in our child. Trying to understand the sense of loss and bereavement that can come to a parent in this experience, and yet the flipside of the coin in recognizing the joy in seeing your child fully embrace who they feel their authentic self to be.
“It’s a mixed blessing, and I wanted to find a way of representing both those things, which were very much my experience.”
